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Christianity has found itself quite compatible with slavery as well as the anti-slavery movement.... [yada yada yada]

Dear RWP, it appears you have chosen to resort to "cheap debating points" rather than directly engage the issue I raised. IMO, one doesn't clarify debating points by resorting to the tactics of "moral equivalency" where such do not apply/obtain. The argument is clear enough, as long as you don't "smoooodge it" with too much irrelevancy.

Just to restate it: "Dennett's/Dawkins' hateful political ideology is perfectly "cognate" with materialist theory in general, and Darwinist theory in particular, on all principal points."

Please don't run a whole of "spun history" by me here. Just refute the proposition, if you can.

Dennett's/Dawkins' hateful political ideology is perfectly "cognate" with materialist theory in general, and Darwinist theory in particular, on all principal points."

As it stands, it's an unsupported assertion, and one that begs way too many questions:

Darwinist theory is necessarily materialist (I think it is of necessity naturalist, but not materialist; I've previously expressed doubts about determinist theories of mind, for example).
That Dennett and Dawkins have a particular 'bright' political ideology. I don't see it. I chased down Dennett's article, and it simply said they were a group of naturalist rationalists. To tell you the truth, after trying to argue with our own troup of fundamentalist know-nothings (and you know that doesn't include you or a few others here, but it includes a lot of posters on crevo threads), I'm seriously thinking of joining these folks, if only to make sure they have an appropriately conservative counterweight.

Maybe we can have a caucus of bright FReepers.

BTW, I will post the Dennett article, when I get time.

Just to restate it: "Dennett's/Dawkins' hateful political ideology is perfectly "cognate" with materialist theory in general, and Darwinist theory in particular, on all principal points."

Hi Betty! You roped me in on this one, because I think you unfairly represent Darwin's point of view. Normally you and A-G are too philosophical for me to follow along and I just enjoy the ride.

Darwin was normally very private about his religious beliefs so his faith is easy to mis-understand, but in a letter to Mr. J. Fordyce in 1879, he revealed a sense of his state of mind:

"What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one but myself. But, as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates...In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."

I'm familiar with Dawkins, but not Dennett. Dawkins is openly hostile to religion and its not hard to find him repeating his hostility in his writing and in his public statements. I would not characterize Darwin's worst case agnosticism with Dawkin's outright hostility and atheism. Thanks for listening (reading?).

Thank you so much for the heads up to your discussion!

Indeed, for the first time ever I've been subjected to a rash of "cheap debating tricks" on another thread. One of them was the strawman tactic, another was things taken out of context, another was applying the subject to a different object.

Something has changed at the foundation of the debate in the last couple of days and I don't know what caused it. Do you?